Chinese New Year Trays 2015

Happy Chinese New Year 2015!

It has been a crazy busy February for us thus far.

It's all spring cleaning, purging, painting, shopping and decorating for the past few weeks.

For some reason, hubs is totally into CNY this year.

He bought cookies, helped in cleaning and wasn't whining when shopping.

I can only think of one word to describe his change.

Domesticated.

Hehe.

We repainted our living room and changed the furniture based on this colour scheme. 

Bye bye, my purple room.

Image from google

I took some time to prepare some CNY-inspired trays for the kids.

They were not used as frequently as I would have liked because we were just busy!

He was immediately drawn to the angpow tray.

He insisted they were called ham pao (crybaby) instead of angpow. Hehe.

His work was to insert RM10 per angpow for mama.

 

We prepared my parents angpows as well with this gorgeous packets from H&M.

I added some deco and he was like, "Can i add this ball?"

"Err, baby, that's Christmas."

 

When I was preparing this tray,  I was thinking about .

And can be sheep or goat.

He wasn't very pleased when I gave him my explanation.

"Mama, everyone says 'Have a very goat year'. Why you put sheep?"

Forming letters using Froebel set 8.

 A little butterfly painting to welcome spring.

We spruced up the Froebel/Gabe gift area for free play.

February is a month of celebrations for us.

Birthdays, CNY, Valentines....

This Valentine has been really special because my dear hubs finally decided to send me flowers!

When we were dating, he used to send flowers and bears to the hospital while I was at work

for no reason at all. This is my first roses after almost five years hiatus. Haha.

I immediately texted him to say he really made my day.

For hub's birthday, I bought him a Baskin Robbins cake.

I must admit that I totally forgot his birthday.

A first.

I felt soooo bad. 

So, I paid for all my personal CNY expenses this year as punishment :p

 Oh, see the cake, Tiger picked it.

A pig, it seems...haha!

And he was helping to snap pictures with his very high-tech camera.

I hope this will be kind to everyone.

May you and your family be blessed with health, wealth and love.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Halloween Trays 2014

We are all set for Halloween 2014!

Malaysians generally do not celebrate Halloween.

Unless you are a fun, crazy mom like me :p

If I were to celebrate the Hungry Ghost Festival, it would totally freak MIL out.

Since she thinks of Halloween as a costume party...it's A-okay.

FYI, my dear Little Dragon is Princess Sofia this year.

As I am typing this, the package arrived.

It looks small...

*gulp*

Hope it fits....fingers crossed. 

Tiger is going to be a pirate because he had refused it

and ended up wearing a friend's Batman suit last year

 =.="

He still doesn't want to be pirate this year. (God, grant me patience)

So, I bought a set of pirate toy from Daiso (sword, compass, eye patch, earring)

and I made this toy-based learning center with his pirate hat and a glow in the dark sword

FYI after one week, he still hasn't touch the books...

The kids like this Spooky center more.

His fav is The Haunted House by Kazuno Kohara

Dragon loves Witch's Kitchen with it's two-ways flaps

 Science

We learning about the human Skeleton

I printed the 3-parts cards from the Montessori Print Shop bundle

that came with Montessori At Home ebook.

I made a book for him, just for fun.

Fine Motor

 (Pincer grip)

Some bunny clips to match to bunny stickers

Tweezing orange pompoms.

Practical life

Sifting spiders from a tub of rice.

I didn't dye the rice so that they are still edible after washing.

GST coming, must be more money conscious :)

Added a long tong so that they learn to play peacefully.

Finger play

Some creepy crawlies rubber bands to put on the paper tube.

Patterning

Ice cube tray, round tablets from Froebel Gift 7

Math

Stole this idea from a friend.

One-to-one correspondence with the number chips and purple pumpkins

Then insert the correct number of googly eyes into each one.

Scissors skills

DIY some cutting strips with some Halloween stickers.

The pumpkin worksheet is from Kumon

Safety scissors from ELC

Our very popular sensory bin.

Any activity you can make a mess with, she's onzzzzzzz! 

Added some spiders to the spooky corner.

Dragon girl hates spider....

"Eeeeee...spy...spy"
Just like a real princess.

 

Happy Halloween!

Baby School: 2 years 2 months old

Dragon girl is finally settling into our homeschool style. Hooray!

Every night, around eight pm, she will ask to go upstairs, just like her brother :)

Mind you, Tiger and I are STILL bending backwards to accommodate her but 

it's been worth our while and many efforts.

When she is around, most of Tiger's requests will be met with a standard answer, 

"Wait. After Mei-mei sleep, then we can do (insert request)"

First on her to do list is always artistic expressions.

Sounds so pro, right?

But honestly it can be very stressful when she decides to redecorate.

After we've gotten this IKEA easel, she has been pretty kind to the walls in general.

Here, she was demonstrating finger printing to Tiger.

He just watched. Too dirty.

 

She literally brings art to new heights :)

 

Just to encourage her creativity, one side of the study room is reserved 

for her art materials, playdough and loose parts.

Everything is freely accessible to her except glitter.

I hate playdough but they love it, so I just do deep breathing in a corner 

and chant to myself,

"You can clean later"

 

I've also moved the trays outside to make more space for movement and dancing.

Sometimes, they'll bring materials into the room and play peacefully together.

 

At times, she plays alone.

They still fight a lot.

With kicking, punching and scratching actions but what to do?

Like how Winnie and I used to 'play'...haha...but we are best of friends now.

Just fight la.

See her ugly Kim K crying face?

Froebel's

The Froebel gifts are accessible to her at all times at the reading area.

Her favorite is Gift 1.

We left her to play with Tiger's planetarium model for awhile and when

we came back, she'd already taken out the balls from the box.

Coincidence? 

Or she related the planets to the yarn balls?

I prefer to think that she connected the two :)

A tossing game they created.

  

They did this to my pretty fairy lights

 

 A shopping game.

When Tiger was holding 4 yarn balls and Dragon only had 2, I asked him:

"How to make it equal?"

"I need to give Dragon one ball."

And he proceeded to assist her.

Impromptu math :)

 

Tiger and I revisited the water cycle and Dragon was very interested in this model.

She probably thought it was food or we were making ice cream...hihi...

I love her focused look when Tiger was explaining the process to her.

Feeling the heat (light) vs cold (ice)

I saved the most fantabulous update for last. 

She is in a letter sensitive phase.

READING!!!!

In the young ones, pre-reading is just:

1. Holding the book upright.

2. Looking at the pictures intently

3. Telling the story in their own words.

4. Pointing to words from left to right.

5. Pretends to read.

 

Caught her 'reading' so many times in the past 2 weeks.

Here, she was demanding for her Brillkids session.

The system gels really well with her and she is learning so quickly.

Seeing how much she enjoys herself is pure happiness to me.

I made Tiger her 'teacher' and he was in charged of the computer and repeating the words to her.

Since Dragon loves copying her brother, it was a win-win-win situation for all 3 of us.

Sometimes, I really hit the jackpot and I see this:

 A quiet morning with the kids reading by themselves. 

The Reading Area is my all-time fav spot.

 

Or like this morning, reading on the swing :)

Have a wonderful weekend, folks!

Baby School: Lesson A

Baby school

Letter A

Easter Sensory Bin

I created the Magformers A, not Tiger.

He just watched as I tried for 13 minutes....and then,

Tadaaaa!

 Wow!

*flips hair*

Someone kept using a chair to reach for the wooden puzzles.

That someone also scribbled on the boxes and had the audacity to announce

"See *insert name* draw" 

I had to move them down before the monkey breaks her neck.

Yes, only Dragon girl would do this to me.

 

                                      Cry..cannot clean ady.

 Tiger took over my role as teacher.

He kept saying "Mei-mei, look..see, I say look..."

Then, "mama you see this mei-mei, never listen..."

Ignoring the brother, rolling/unrolling mat like there is no tomorrow.

We tried demonstrating one-to-one correspondence. But...

she went off to play with the box of pom-poms with her accomplice.

I find her more cooperative when it is just the 2 of us.

Threading

Dot stamping.

I held her hands while doing this.

Then she stamped all over the paper :)

 Tiger wanted to do some Letter A work, so we did paper tearing and glue

Tiger helped in preparing the Easter bin.

We put treasure into the plastic eggs.

Stickers and alphabet slime!

 

 Her face when thunder roared.

She sat in my lap and hugged me real tight until the storm was over.

I just rocked her saying, "It's okay baby. Mama's here"

Found this picture of Dragon girl in the archive after her
Other Mother aka kakak/help complained that I didn't make a
newborn to 1 year picture frame for her.

I have to admit my mother was right. She was a darn ugly baby
but my then hormonal brain was deluded into thinking she was soooo beautiful.